Hello everyone,
I’m new to the forum. I’ve been a follower of Techlore and Survailance Report for quite a while now. I’m from Europe and work in IT. I think of myself as quite an expert in the field, at least compared to normal people. So I thought, I’d be able to contribute myself.
I was thinking about joining this forum for a while now. What pushed me to finally do it was Henry giving us some homework in this weeks live stream (“Avoiding A Critical Mistake - Privacy Wins Of The Week!”).
I developed a cheep method for recovering your online accounts / your passwords when you louse all your stuff or you’ll get incapacitated and need your family to take care of things.
Here is the default setting, the method was designed for:
- You are using a password manager (for example Bitwarden).
- You are using 2FA via FIDO2/Webauthn.
- You store TOTP-Keys in your Password manager as well.
- You have someone you trust, with a good physical safe.
This is what you do:
- You download the PDF-File, I made:
credential_recovery_letter_A4.pdf - Nextcloud - You print the file as a double sided print to paper.
- Now you have a page with a form on the front and a noise pattern on the back.
- You cut away the blank borders, so the noise pattern reaches to the end of the page.
- You use a pencil to fill in the form:
- First name, last name
- Phone number
- Device username
- Device password
- Password manager user name
- Password manager master password
- Password manager 2FA recovery key
- You fold the letter like a standard business letter.
- The document should be a third in height, with first name, last name and phone number on the front. The rest of the form should be on the inside now and obscured by the noise patter, when you shine a light through the folded letter.
- You seal the letter with standard transparent tape all around the edges.
- Now nobody can read the secrets inside without opening the seal an leaving marks.
- You can put the letter in your own private safe or entrust it to your attorney or a loved one you trust. You can also produce multiple of those letters and leave a copy at all of those locations, but don’t do more than three and be sure they are stored securely.
The is for the following emergencies:
- You forget your master password and/or loose your FIDO2-Key(s).
- You get incapacitated and need someone to take care of your whole life, while you recover.
- You die and your family has to clean up your digital life after your death.
I hope this is helpful to you. I created this method for myself while creating my password manager workflow. It can be used for your personal life, but we also use it at the company I work for. There every employee who works at a computer uses a password manager. The company gifts every one of those employees a physical FIDO2 key to secure their work password vault.
Please let me know what you think, when you try it yourself. I’m happy to answer any questions (even it takes usually days for me to answer forum posts).
Kind regards
Random Person